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For kinky personals, read the high-brow mags

Michael Cleverly

Pop Quiz: In what periodical did I find the following classified ads?

A) All fetishes, domination/submission fantasies explored by Ivy League-educated goddess. Free info: …

B) A very bright sexy redheaded 46-year-old youthful woman longs to find the right man. Photo not required.



What? Need some hints? Here’s more:

C) Very alive retired professional, seeks optimistic, non-depressed woman with intellectual interests, in her 60s, for mutual exploration of culture, travel, friendship and love.




D) Erotic, intelligent, imaginative conversation. Uninhibited exploration of your sexual fantasies. Discretion assured.

OK, a couple more hints and you’re sure to get it.

E) Life-loving 73, looks 53, feels 33, seeks a smart man for romance, affection, possible LTR.

F) Bisexual man, 80, wife with Alzheimer’s, alone for seven years, seeks male companionship and more. I am young in spirit and sexual energy, enjoy a full life in the arts.

How’d we do? You were right when you guessed that they all came from the same source. Obviously not a sleazy supermarket tabloid ” that would be too easy. The AARP magazine (formerly “My Generation”) was a great guess, but wrong. Not The Village Voice or some underground paper like The Phoenix. Certainly not either of our beloved local papers. The prestigious Journal of American Classified Advertising has ranked The Aspen Times and the Daily News both as being in the bottom one-tenth of 1 percent when it comes to interesting personal ads. I suspect this is because there are rarely any personal ads in either paper and that anyone with an ounce of moxie can find whatever they’re looking for simply by heading downtown for a couple of pops after 11 p.m.

The answer is that I gleaned these ads from The New York Review of Books. I subscribed about a year ago. I didn’t notice these personals for a long time because I never read the classifieds in anything.

I’ve always enjoyed The New York Times Book Review and still do. I was a little disenchanted with it when I subscribed to the NYRB. There’s a lot of good stuff in the Times Book Review, but there’s also a lot of stuff that ends up on its best-seller list. This is mostly trash.

If you were to sit down and read everything on the Times best-seller list in any given week, you would have to conclude that reading as an intellectual activity is vastly overrated and that people who read are not necessarily any smarter than the folks who have made reality TV such a success. The fiction side of the best-seller list is overpopulated with books by lawyers pretending to have souls, old guys pretending to be secret agents and detectives, loveless women and Stephen King. (Don’t get me started on Stephen King.) The nonfiction side of the list is a little better.

So I subscribed to The New York Review of Books. My junk mail has gotten a lot classier. The NYRB involves itself with books that I would probably not otherwise be exposed to. I don’t often go out and purchase these books because the articles suffice. Now I’ve discovered the personals ” a bonus, like the cartoons on the op-ed page of the Sunday Times.

Now that my fascination with the personals is rivaling my admiration for the rest of the magazine, I’ve decided to do a bit of pure research. I’ve responded to a couple of these ads. The “life-loving gal of 73″ ” I wonder if when she says she feels 33 she means that she herself actually feels 33, or that if I felt her she’d feel 33 to me. As for the 80-year-old bisexual guy with the Alzheimer’s wife … I just wonder. I sent the same letter to both parties. It went like this:

Dear ____ or _____,

Sounds like a visit from you would really hit the spot. [At this point I can’t expect a family newspaper to print the actual meat of the text, so I’ll skip ahead.]

So if that seems like as much fun to you as it does to me, come on out.

Eagerly awaiting!

Jimmy Ibbotson,

Woody Creek

As usual, I included Ibby’s complete physical address, plus his unlisted home phone number. I even drew a cute little map to his place and on it. I indicated his house with a heart, which I colored in with a red Crayola.

Ibby’s out of town right now, and I’m hoping my research will be concluded by the time he gets back.